Art of Supply

"You know, Robert, I have no expectation to ever be happy at work. I just hope to be a little less miserable." 
That's the line from a restaurant server that Robert Martichenko, board chair of TrailPath Workplace Solutions and founder of the lean consultancy LeanCore, can't shake. 
Operational supply chain roles aren't easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible for people to find dignity in their work. Hoping to be less miserable one day at a time does little for individual frontline workers, and it does even less for the company that employs them and the customers they serve.
In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Robert and Kelly Barner dig into what dignity means in the workplace, and why it is not the same thing as respect:
- Why "respect for people" is the wrong frame, and what dignity actually requires
- The four states TrailPath's research finds people in at work — and why nearly half of most workforces are declining or surviving, not growing or thriving
- What the second law of thermodynamics has to do with your supply chain, and why chasing unit cost quietly cost procurement its relationships
 
Links:
Robert Martichenko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertmartichenko/ 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

In December of 2025, a $285,000 Windrose Technology electric semi-truck went missing. It still has not been found. 
Reportedly, two mechanics who kept it running, Travis Waite and Harold Keller, left Windrose Technology owed a combined $91,000 in back wages, and (according to the company) are holding the truck until they are paid.
That's not the strangest thing about Windrose Technology. It's just the most dramatic.
Windrose is a Chinese-founded, Belgium-headquartered electric truck startup. It was founded in 2022 by Wen Han, a 36-year-old Stanford MBA and all-around colorful character. 
By most independent accounts, the truck itself is good, but that does little to explain the public disputes with former employees. 
Is this a well-engineered truck buried under a chaotic company with an eccentric founder or a company whose chaos is a preview of what may happen when production has to scale?
In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers:
- Why a $285,000 electric truck is currently sitting somewhere nobody at Windrose can find, and why the two guys who allegedly know where it is aren't telling
- How a truck built in China ended up with a VIN that says it was made in Georgia, and what that suggests about trucking safety compliance's dependence on the honor system
- Why Nikola's pardoned, convicted founder made a lowball offer for the company, and why that story gets a lot more complicated once you see the actual trucks Windrose has on the road in Texas and Chile
 
Links:
Troubling Times for Electric Trucking: https://artofprocurement.com/blog/supply-troubling-times-for-electric-trucking 
Why is nobody talking about China's new supply chain regulations?: https://artofprocurement.com/blog/supply-why-is-nobody-talking-about-chinas-new-supply-chain-regulations 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

"FedEx is not simply selling an asset, it is trading a warehousing unit for a deeper transportation relationship with one of the world's largest container lines, which is a smarter reallocation than a straight divestiture." — Bruno Digital
FedEx just sold its Supply Chain unit to CMA CGM for $1.4 billion. It sold for the same price FedEx paid for the same business, under a different name, back in 2015. 
But FedEx didn't just sell an operating unit. They also entered into a larger agreement for ocean and air cargo that highlights some interesting trends in global logistics.
In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers:
- What the $1.4 Billion deal includes, and the multi-year ocean and air cargo agreements worth an estimated $3.5 Billion that are riding along with it
- Why U.S. law would make it impossible for CMA CGM to ever buy FedEx outright
- Whether CMA CGM's growing air cargo fleet is competition for FedEx, or something else entirely
 
Links:
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

"AI will never replace that human judgment. And the number one reason for that is responsibility." — Elisar Nurmagambet, Co-Founder and CEO, Tesari AI
When Meta acquired the Chinese AI agent startup Manus for roughly $2 Billion, the due diligence looked clean.  
Four months later, China's government blocked the deal and ordered it unwound. 
Elisar Nurmagambet, Co-Founder and CEO of Tesari AI, and Brian Andersen, their Vice President of National Security Applications, join Kelly Barner to explain why the compliance model most companies still run on wasn't built for this moment, and why some of the sharpest early-warning signals in global trade never show up in a standard database at all.
 In this episode Elissar and Brian discuss:
- Why "checkbox compliance" has become a board-level, CEO-level liability
- What a government-licensed social media influencer in China revealed about the Meta-Manus deal, months before it collapsed
- Why "substance over form" now determines whose jurisdiction your supply chain falls under, regardless of where an entity is legally registered
- The investigative mindset that supply chain professionals have to develop to succeed in today's challenging conditions
 
Links:
Elisar Nurmagambet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elissarn/ 
Brian Andersen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tbrianandersen/ 
Tesari AI: https://www.tesari.ai 
National Security Starts in the Supply Chain (AOS, Ep 211): https://artofprocurement.com/blog/supply-national-security-starts-in-the-supply-chain 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe

"Just-in-time inventory is great when it's working, but when it stops working, it's a huge disaster because you don't have material staged and you don't have strategic reserves." — Michael Murray, Senior Director of Global Supply Chain, DSV Inventory Management Solutions
For most of the 2000s, the mandate in manufacturing was lean: hold less, order just-in-time, and keep working capital off the balance sheet. Then came a string of shocks: COVID, the Suez Canal blockage, and a global chip shortage. 
All of a sudden, just-in-time started looking more like just-in-trouble. Companies swung hard toward just-in-case, stockpiling inventory as insurance against the next disruption.
Michael Murray, Senior Director of Global Supply Chain at DSV Inventory Management Solutions, isn't ready to declare just-in-time dead. 
In this episode of Art of Supply, Michael joins Kelly Barner to talk about the cost challenges that can result when inventory is managed reactively: 
- Why the pendulum keeps swinging between just-in-time and just-in-case
- Why trade policy is becoming a bigger driver of inventory strategy than COVID ever was
- How a consolidated VMI model changes the math for OEMs, and why suppliers may be harder to convince than CFOs
 
Links:
Michael Murray on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mp-murray/ 
Kelly Barner on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-barner-6884443/ 
Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/art-of-supply-6895142546301960193 
Art of Supply on AOP: http://www.artofsupply.com 
Subscribe to the Art of Procurement Newsletter: https://resources.artofprocurement.com/art-of-procurement-podcast-subscribe